The Way She Feels
by AoUsagi
Summary: She hated him, she thought. But then he died for her, and she can't stop pining and seeing his face again is what hurts her undead, vampiric heart the most. rated M for character death and blood.


**Authors Note:** _ooh, looky, a little Hellsing fanfic for you to all sink your fangs into. Just a simple oneshot, kinda angsty, kinda sad, I guess. I'm planning a larger one in the future, but here's something for you to have while you wait (ever so patiently) for me to update Subject 13's Butler._

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**The Way She Feels**

-:-A Hellsing Fanfiction-:-

…

Seras Victoria had not been allowed to be attracted to this man. Her master had been quite clear about that. Her masters' master, Sir Integra Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing, had been _especially_ clear about that. Friendship was fine; comradeship was expected. But to be attracted to the new captain of the new Hellsing defense force, the rag-tag group of mercenaries of questionable history, the Wild Geese – no. That was strictly off-limits.

At first, she hadn't known what Sir Integra would have been so against the idea. Romance had never really been an issue in the Hellsing household – Sir Integra showed no interest in anyone, man or woman, and the maids – well, if they had romances or affairs or relationships in or around their work, that was their business. It was expected for them to be discreet about it, to keep it out of their work.

After all, Master Alucard had once told her that bringing emotions into your job was a waste of time, if those emotions wasn't the joy of bringing down battalions in single swoops, felling victim after victim, draining their bodies of blood. If you sympathized, you died.

She supposed, in retrospect, that this was what made Master Alucard so powerful. He didn't give in to fear, sympathy, sadness, loving – she guessed that he had stopped feeling emotions when he had stopped feeling alive.

But one thing that Seras had never been able to wrap her head around was her own emotional state. This man, this long-haired Frenchman with the bad mouth and the terrible smoking habit had her in a real spin. Having such a heightened awareness of everything about her since becoming one of the undead, Seras had been experiencing emotions in a much more volatile state than when she had been alive. Mood swings were common, but Master Alucard had been helping her to control them. Often his methods involved taking her down to the shooting range with the anti-tank rifles and submachine guns that adorned the walls of the Hellsing Armory. Often times his methods only served to make Seras even madder when she was shooting things. Because every time she had taken the shot, she had been thinking of _him._

He was an asshole. He swore, he was a womanizer, he smoked, and he had those terrible habits that drove her nuts. Like wearing his hat inside. Master Alucard did that, too, but she had seen him without it often enough. But this man, nope – all day, every day, there was that damn acubra hat with the Australian pin holding up one side, sitting atop his head like some kind of pompous prize he liked to parade around in. Then there was his ideas on tactical situations. 'Small arms won't hit a target at four hundred to five hundred meters away', he'd say, and she'd know otherwise. Aim and accuracy was key in success when it came to something like that, so often she'd take the weapon he'd be waving around in the air, take aim at a target the desired distance away, and proceed to blow it to smithereens.

Then there was his love for explosives. Everything had to explode somewhere along the line. Bombs? He'd spend hours with his men fawning over the latest plans and designs, tweaking them ever so slightly for a more effective burst and damage capacity. Guns? It was hard to find him without a firearm anywhere on his person – she'd seen some of the other Hellsing guards strip-search him _five times_ before they found all the concealed weapons on his person – three handguns, a small revolver, four magazines of ammunition – they even found an old, busted bomb detonator. It took some time and effort for him to calm them down and explain that it had already been used and was no longer connected to the bomb, which had long since ceased to exist.

_And_, she counted off in her head, this was what annoyed her most: he was a huge flirt. Any woman was a target. Except for Sir Integra – somehow, the braided bastard had figured out real quick that Sir Integra did not stand for that nonsense. But it didn't stop him from flirting with Seras, or any of the female guests that would come to the Hellsing manor, accompanied by their male counterparts, or even alone. Seras would always find herself bristling with anger. _Doesn't he have anything better to do? God, that woman isn't even pretty. He's wasting his time, her husbands right behind her! Geez, he really doesn't have any shame!_

When he flirted with her, she couldn't think of anything more gross. That sneaky eye, taking in her full figure, her uniform, her face. Those big, rough hands, often making some wild gesture or pointing right at her, or holding and aiming a gun. The smell of his clothes, of him – of gunpowder, tobacco, a hint of aftershave under a layer or masculine body odour, and just a hint of something else – something sweeter, like cinnamon, or cocoa – a scent she couldn't place. The words that tipped from around the cigarette between his teeth – flirtatious, boisterous, coy, teasing – she very quickly came to the conclusion that teasing was his favourite pastime.

And just when Seras Victoria didn't think that she couldn't hate this man more, the Hellsing mansion was set under siege by Millenniums Nazi vampire troops, and the Wild Geese had to band together with her to defend the only home they'd found in the world. A world that seemed to be collectively against them at that point, and all they had was overly-hyped mercenaries, lots of ammunition, and her, a vampire fledging hardly strong enough to call herself a vampire.

Anger turned to desperation – every time Seras would see destruction and bodies of the Wild Geese littering the mansion, every step she took – she desperately searched for him. She found herself praying that he wasn't the next to fall – the next casualty. But as blood splattered and stained the walls, as the German troops overran the compound and as their leader, Zorin, stepped forward to bring one last challenge to the table, Seras found it harder and harder to believe that she'd ever find the body of the man she couldn't help but hope against hope was still alive. She'd made her way to the Round Table conference room, only to find most of the men inside dead, the barricades obliterated. Anyone who was left inside was silent if they weren't dead.

Zorin had made her scream, quaver in fear and cry tears of pain she'd never wanted to cry again. Zorin had run her through with a scythe, slammed her down in pooling puddles of her own blood, the tang bitter against her lips, her tongue, feeling her teeth crack and her nose probably break. Zorin had sliced through her eyes, blinding her, drowning her in nothing but darkness stained with blood that she couldn't even see. She had known she would die.

But then _he _had appeared, out of nowhere. She couldn't see him, but she had heard the sound of his breathing, the laboured breaths and the grunts and the groans as he'd stumbled after smashing away Zorin's attacks with the butt of his gun. He'd staggered down to her, she could feel him grasping for a hold on her shoulder, his fingers slipping over the torn flesh and through the wound that had replaced her left arm. Pain was beyond her now – the bleeding stump was numb, and that numbness was quickly spreading through the rest of her being – soon, she knew that shock would take over her completely, and she'd be unable to move. She'd felt his hands grapple with her clothes, tugging her up and hauling her over his shoulders. Blood and sweat and the scent of _him_ hit her nostrils, the scent so heady, her awareness of her surroundings so very heightened after having lost her sight, and she could feel herself slowly losing consciousness. She'd felt him stagger beneath her weight combined with his abdominal injuries, her body jerked along with every slow step he took back towards the last shred of safety they had. She'd felt him jerk and gag, heard the sickening shredding of flesh as bullets ripped through his midriff. But he hadn't stopped, not once.

He had died for her.

Blind, lost and numb, Seras had landed on the blood stained carpet of the hall after he'd fallen from taking a scythe in the back after Zorin had gotten back up. Seras couldn't feel his body heat any more. She had his blood staining her clothes, the stuff wet and slippery on her fingertips. She could hear him gasping for breath. She heard the lighting of a cigarette. She heard his voice, she crawled to him, and she held him.

And then, Pip Bernadotte had breathed his last.

Seras heard the last shudder of his body as he died.. She felt the tears sliding from her blind, cut eyes, mixing with the blood running down her face, stinging through the cuts in her skin and on her eyeballs. The pain in itself was blinding, but was nothing after she knew that the one man who had made her life _hell_, the one man who got her wound up tighter than a spring, was _dead._

There was the firm, warm pressure of his mouth on hers, his last act. She had tasted their blood, mixing together and over their tongues. Her blood was indistinguishable from his at this point. But as he died, toppling over and hitting the ground with a wet thud, his hair loose and tangled, stained with blood that was already beginning to dry and clot, Seras wasn't sure what it was that made her get back up. To pull his body back to hers. To cry, to wail, to let every feeling of pain and of anguish inside of her to come gushing out in howling sobs that wracked her tired, beaten body.

She heard someone saying something. Zorin, maybe. Announcing that back up Germans had arrived to finish off the last of the Hellsing dogs that remained, trying to defend their home in vain. But the words were muted, somehow, as Seras heard Bernadotte's last words in her head. _Drink my blood._

She couldn't think of anything more disgusting than defiling him like that. She hoped to God he'd forgive her.

…

"What are you doing up here?"

Seras looked around from her perch up on the tiles of the recently finished repairs of the Hellsing mansion rooftop, to see Sir Integra Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing standing behind her at the skylight that led up to the open-to-the-sky view of the Hellsing grounds.

"Oh, Sir – I'm sorry, I was just – "

"Answer the question, Seras."

_Seras._ There was her name again. That name that no one called her by if they didn't respect her. For the last several months, it had been _Police Girl this, Police Girl that._ Never Seras. Sir Integra had occasionally called her by her proper name. Some of the Hellsing forces had once referred to her as Miss Victoria. Master Alucard had only ever called her that _once._ The only time he had shown any real pride in her. He treated her as kindly and fairly as every one else, but before she had become a fully fledged vampire, he had never been slow to remind of just how weak she was. He had been her driving force to be better, without submitting to the hunger of vampirism.

But Pip Bernadotte…he had always called her Seras. Or mon cher – _my dear. _She blinked away the stray tear that was collecting in her eye as she turned back to her masters' master.

"Thinking, Sir. I was thinking."

Integra didn't ask for a further explanation – she knew that Seras had taken the entire ordeal with Millennium, and Alucard, very hard. She knew that Seras pined after her master more than anyone else. And Seras in turn knew that Integra missed the company of her vampire, even if the head of the Hellsing household never let it show.

Once again, it was bringing emotions into the job. Bad idea all round. In reflection, Seras realized how she had been affected by bringing in her feelings for Bernadotte into her line of work. What she had once assumed was repulsion, she had recently realized was actually attraction. Thoughts of being held close to him, wrapped up in those big, strong arms, buried in the scent of his clothes, his skin, his hair – hearing his carefree laugh, seeing that cheeky grin with the smoke chomped between his teeth – it had taken her some time to realize why she had been pining over the lack of Bernadotte's company more than she had been over her masters – and this, she realized, was the only explanation. His potty mouth, his bad manners – everything about him made her miss him and wish for his presence around her more and more as each day passed.

_Love is so strange_, she mused, getting to her feet and joining her master at the skylight. But she shook the thoughts from her head as she stood at attention to Sir Integra.

"Was there anything you needed, Sir?"

Integra looked tired – more so than she had in a long, long time. Even more so than during the Millennium ordeal. Paperwork, sorting out the repairs to the mansion, filing the damage reports and so forth, and even extending her hand in helping to the restoration and the rebuilding of London – Integra was working herself to the bone these days. Seras had been a part of the clean up crew a few weeks ago – it had been her and the last surviving members of the Wild Geese, plus some troops that had been sent in to help with the clean up from America. But the leader of the crew had let Seras go after she had scared off a lot of the volunteer troops with her inhuman strength. So the young vampire had returned to the mansion, watched the repairs be made, watched the mansion be refurbished and reconstructed. Seen the new staff be hired, introduced to the household – and she had grown quite weary of it quite quickly. The rooftop had been a nice and quite place to hide away during the night whenever Sir Integra didn't need her, and during the day, Seras had taken to sleeping in the cast iron and onyx coffin that had been Alucards. It had been rescued off the derelict ship he'd coasted back into the Thames, and returned to the Hellsing household during the clean up of London. But Integra was needing Seras more and more – after the loss of both their head butler and their head vampire hunter, the Hellsing household was halved of its former glory. Walter C. Dornez and Alucard were both no longer a part of their every day lives, but Seras knew that Integra missed both men greatly.

"There's some new recruits for our armed units downstairs," Sir Integra said, readjusting her glasses and bringing Seras back down to earth. "I'd like you to greet them and show them to the barracks before dismissing them for the night. Introduce yourself, just don't scared them."

"Yessir," Seras nodded, and Integra turned away without another word and made her way back down off the rooftop, down the stairs, and Seras found herself, without anything else to do, following her master back down the stairs and into the newly finished rebuilt mansion. It didn't have the same, old-mansion feel to it as the previous one, but Seras liked the rebuilt mansion well enough – she could probably grow to call it home again someday. At least the basements had been left untouched by the chaos; her chambers and her Master Alucards' had been left unharmed. It was one thing that Integra had been glad about – having to explain to the builders why they were finding coffins and empty blood-packs among the rubble was _not_ something the Hellsing head had considered to be particularly fun, and was spared the chagrin by the basement levels remaining undamaged.

The hallways were of little comfort for Seras, however, as she traversed the staircases alone after walking Sir Integra back to her office. On one landing, she passed a mirror on a stand, meant to reflect the beauty of the paintings that adorned the wall opposite. But as Seras caught sight of her reflection in the reflective glass, she saw his face. His smile. His eye.

Pausing, staring into the mirror, Seras wondered, if she could ever stop feeling the way she felt about him. His image didn't fade, didn't disappear no matter how many times she blinked or shook herself. The dead man who's essence was now forever a part of her, inside of her – tears slid freely from her eyes as finally, she was able to shake his memory from her vision, and she gripped the mirrors wooden stand tightly, stopping only when the small cracks of wood slowly creaking, ready to snap, beneath her tense fingers. She had to get a hold of herself. Vampires did not love dead men.

_Even if he had given his life, his love, so she might live._

Seras furiously scrubbed at her eyes as she continued to make her way downstairs – her footsteps echoing loudly on the hollow stairs. She set her expression to angry – that always made the soldiers and troops pay attention. All other emotions got squashed down to where they couldn't interfere.

As she faced the small squadron of fresh-faced recruits gathered in the mansions main foyer in anticipation of her arrival, she wondered fleetingly,

_Will I ever be able to not feel the way I do about you?_


End file.
